The vinegar smell is probably just the overripe pears fermenting (I used to have four enormous old pear trees and I know that smell well). Your worms are just enjoying some pear cider right now...don't be surprised if they start slurring their speech and mooning passing cars. If you started with 1 pound of worms a month ago, then at their best they will consume about half a pound of food a day - five pounds is at least 10 days worth of food, not including the bedding. You did good to mix in lots of bedding to keep the air circulating. If the pears are actively fermenting, then that could generate some heat. I think you'll be fine, and I'm sure the worms will love all the sugar and subsequent microbes, bacteria, fungus, etc.

If I were in this situation, I would do two things: 1) don't add anymore food until the pears are mostly gone. 2) make sure that there is a large patch of just bedding that the worms can move into in case the pears get too hot. It sounds like you spread the layers of pears completely over the top of the worm inn. If so, you might want to move some of them over and leave a third of it without pears - just damp bedding.

My understanding is that worm inns have really great air circulation, and the extra bedding you added should keep it from becoming anaerobic. I wouldn't worry too much.

Let us know how it goes!

As long as you've got a lot of material in that Inn I wouldn't be too worried, it's why I got one myself. I add bread waste and quiet a bit as I make my own, and I get heating and a strong yeast smell (if I dig into it). It just means that the worms keep away for the 2-3 days it's warm before eating it. Gets warm enough I can feel the difference just with my hand on the mesh top. Some massive mold growth also.

I've added whole fruits like pears (yes, playing around with the Inn) and had the thing bubbly with fermentation when I poked the skin. No worms in sight, all eaten later.

Tracy has a good idea also with keeping a part of the top layer clear. I do my feedings with 1/2 or 2/3rds covering the top, fill the other side with bedding.

With heat rising and the airflow of the Inn, be really hard to cook anything if you've got anywhere below for the worms to go. Got to love the Inn :)

Good to know guys thanks.

I built my own worm inn but it is really close to the official one size wise. I have it about 2/3 to 3/4 full now.

With the amount of food stuffs I have in there I think I should hold off adding more until about the first of next month. That will give it three weeks to process and I have a lot of food in there as I dig around.

I trust you are saving your prime kitchen scraps in the freezer or delegating them to an outdoor compost heap for the next few weeks.

Please start a new post telling us all about your self made worm inn. Especially interesting would be your considerations for holding up all that weight. Both the structual strength and the material strength of the seams of the cloth.

I have been considering both gardening and vermicomposting in old $1 reuseable grocery bags. The material seems breathable. I want air to get to my worms and to my plant roots.

I see compost bags made out of a mystery material but do not want to pay the big $$$'s for them.

The alternative would be to put many holes in the sides of my flow through.

As for the 5 pounds of sliced pears, that is a real system stress test. Lets hope it is non-destructive testing. Good instincts to bank it with new bedding.

I would keep a close eye on it. I once added too many pears to my COW and cooked them all. It was not pretty. In fact, it freaked me out so much I took it down and put it away for a few years. I had nightmares for days after it happened. Now when a add a large amount of anything that could heat up, I don't cover the whole top with it, I check it frequently and if it feels warm or hot, I stir it up a little,and leave the top off. More often, I just add little bits at a time instead of a whole bunch all at once. That way I don't stress out about it.

Kitchen scraps are going in milk jugs and then set on top of the compost pile out back. This way they should go through several freeze/thaw cycles before being finally added to the bin. Late December in northern-Illinois and you don't know what you'll get - today was the first real snowfall of the season but tomorrow is supposed to be back to low 40s F.

I thought about the reusable grocery bags but gave up on them after a while. I am thinking one would work well if I need to store VC before we thaw out for next season. For the most part the bags are made of non-woven polypropylene. UV from the sun will eat that stuff up before a season is over in the garden. As for a bin it would be a good test. It will have a high surface area to volume ratio though. Expect to water it a lot is what I think. Would a small bag like this make more of a batch process compost cycle than a traditional bin?

So will my basement smell like pear hooch until all the bedding I mixed in with the load of pears is converted to VC?

Thinking about it I don't think so as it should be, at least a little, volatile and dissipate before that much newsprint gets eaten.

Unique vermicomposting experiments are sometimes difficult for spouces. I have had to temper my experiments. Be glad it is pears and not 5 pounds of brocolli stems and cabbage shreds.

I am curious mr yan as to why you mixed red wigglers with European worms??? My first attempt at raising Euros in an indoor bin did not go well, so I dumped the bin into an outdoor compost bin. The Euro's continued to do well for a while, then the red wigglers appeared and took over the bin. I don't see many Euro's left in the outdoor bin now since the red wigglers took over. I'm wondering if others have experienced anything similar to this.

As to the fermented pears, I tried an experiment two summers ago I will call 'worm kashi', where I fermented food scraps in a five gallon pail before adding them to my indoor worm bins. The wife complained about the aroma so I canceled the project, however the worms had no problems with devouring the fermented goodies!

morgan_3: I mistakenly bought a few euros first at a big-box outdoor outfitter. I thought I had EF for about a month then I learned better. I got real EF when someone graciously gave me a starter colony of them. I don't mind if my bins tend to one species exclusively as long as it still composts down. My goal is the compost for my garden the worms are just a method to get there.

When the pears went in they were just over ripe and they fermented in the bin. I was ferreting around in there yesterday and could find no remains of that load.

I have a great wife. She puts up with my gardening habit. I guess you can only do so much due-diligence before you enter a deal right? It does help that my little 200 square foot garden produced over 112 pounds of food for the 2011 season. How much would 4 pounds of fresh basil retail for?

Don't know mr_yan about the cost of Basil in the grocery stores, however I truly enjoy fresh basil chopped up, added to melted butter, and poured over a baked potato. Fresh basil is nothing like the dried stuff sold commercially, but what is?

Most of what we consume is from our own efforts, and quite frankly I have a serious problem with grocery store produce when I can grow my own. There is no comparison between the two, so price for me never enters the equation.

I have tried preaching to my kids about having just ten square feet of garden how much better they could be eating, and for a lot less. Useless Crusade! But now I have grandkids and they are already becoming avid little gardeners. The oldest even got her preschool started with a small garden...how's that for a five year old?